The Utter Insanity of the Bernie Bro Coinspiracy Theory

[MrWendel]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-womack/the-utter-insanity-of-the-bernie-bro_b_9153554.html



Let's start with the most obvious facts: The "miracle six" coin tosses did not happen, and if they had, they wouldn't have changed the delegate count coming out of Iowa.

The Des Moines Register, where the story mostly originated, currently reports that at least 14 coin tosses took place -- and that Bernie Sanders won exactly half of those now known. The Washington Post even amended its ridiculous what-if adventure with video of a coin toss that Sanders won. And, according to a party official quoted in the Register, "Of the data we have, Sanders won the majority of those delegates that were chosen through the game of chance."

On top of that, CNN, NPR and The Atlantic have all explained that the delegates chosen by coin toss are not, in fact, votes for president at the national convention. They are, rather, delegates to one of Iowa's 99 county conventions, which have practically no impact on the outcome of the race. 11,000 of those come out of the caucus, while just 44 state delegates will eventually cast votes for presidential nominee. Six wouldn't make a difference, even in a race as close as this.

So anyone implying that Hillary Clinton won Iowa by miraculously calling an improbable number of coin tosses is, at this point, willfully ignorant. Willfully, painfully ignorant.

But let us pretend, for a moment, that this is not the case, and the facts actually comport to the conspiracy narrative. That Hillary Clinton did win six out of six coin flips that took place the night of the caucus. It's still fucking batshit crazy to believe there was some conspiracy afoot.

Imagine what this conspiracy would entail. All of the caucus officials would have to be secretly in the pocket of the Clinton campaign. Not a single Sanders supporter within the organization of the entire Iowa Democratic Party, and all of the Clinton supporters are down to cheat. They would have to be armed with two double-sided coins and trained in quick slight-of-hand, so that they could replace the coin after the call was made. They would have done this six times, sometimes on video, without ever being caught. And all of this effort would have been made to gain no real advantage in the unlikely event of a precinct tie.

Suddenly, that 1 in 64 improbability of winning six coin tosses in a row doesn't seem so far-fetched... to a reasonable, thinking person.